Instructor

Prof. Kshitij Jadhav

Semester

Autumn 2023-24

Course Difficulty

The course difficulty is between easy and moderate. The biology part is fairly straightforward and not very involved, whereas the ML related part might be a bit difficult to pick up if you haven’t done any ML course before. Students from any year can take up this course.

Time commitment needed

No time apart from lectures was required throughout the semester. Preparing one night before the midsem and endsem would also have been enough to land a decent grade. The project was quite open-ended however, and could take up a significant amount of time depending on the complexity of the problem statement chosen.

Grading Statistics

Grading was extremely lenient, with around half the students (104) getting AAs. The number of ABs was 68 out of 214.

Attendance Policy

Attendance wasn’t mandatory in the first half of the course, although it was taken. In the second half, it was announced that attendance would carry marks, however, I don’t believe that this was actually implemented. Attending the lectures was highly recommended however, and it will make understanding the concepts very easy.

Teaching Style

The professor is quite interactive, and makes the lectures interesting, by providing anecdotes. He understands the students’ perspective well and has thus adapted the content to make it relevant for us. He is also pretty chill and friendly, and accommodating of students’ requests. Would definitely recommend that you take up any course he is offering.

Feedback on Assignments/ Tutorials/ Projects

There were no assignments. There was a group project to be done in terms of 3/4. We could choose a problem statement from a given list or come up with a problem statement ourselves. The projects were centred around use of ML/DL techniques for healthcare domain. The prof had high expectations from the project and expected some novelty. The prof was willing to provide GPUs/any other help required for the project, and dedicated some lectures to guidance for the projects.

Feedback on Exams (Written Evaluation)

The exams were MCQ based, and were extremely straightforward, with questions asked directly from the slides. Most of the syllabus is information-based and thus the exam doesn’t require any solving, but doesn’t require too much rote memorization either. Some questions were asked from the project presentations of all the teams, which were slightly tough. Overall the exam was fairly straightforward and going through the slides a few times would have been good enough preparation.

Future Tracks

This course doesn’t directly act as a prerequisite, but it can be a good starting point for anyone interested in pursuing projects/courses in KCDH as this course will give a good overview of all the topics in this domain.

Course Importance

This course provides a good blend of biology, healthcare systems as well as ML/DL. One can take up projects in KCDH after this course as it provides a good perspective on the problems in this field.

Additional Details

Would wholeheartedly recommend this course if you have even a slight interest in biology and healthcare systems. Definitely not a heavy elective, and grading is also extremely lenient. What more do you want from a course :)

Written By

Aum Samel